Thanks for the info. The reason for the caveat was that the statistics of death penalty countries i had was from early 2003. I wasn’t sure about the policies of the new Iraqi government.
Need I remind you that it costs the state more to pursue the death penalty than it does to put someone behind bars for life? That argument simply doesn’t hold weight. It actually costs more to kill someone than to keep them alive.
Irrelevant to my argument. The fact that we have to pay enormous sums of money on scum is what matters. Dump them on an island. No DP, so no outcry from those opposed to same. One appeal. You lose - you leave.
I’ve seen arguments on both sides of this one, but you are missing the differential with capital punishment in the US that is not challenged at all, yet potentially raises troubling questions. Killing a white person makes the murderer more than twice as likely to receive the death penalty as killing a black person, once other variables are controlled (though of course there is argument as to how successfully such control can be done). (See McCleskey v Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, fn5 (1987).
Nick
The difference between the death pentalty and killing in self-defense is the element of an imminent threat. That is, to kill to prevent yourself or a third party from harm when a real immediate threat exists. In your example, if an attacker, by any reasonable account, is about to cause harm, and lethal force is the only reasonable way of preventing said harm, then the use of lethal force is justified in self defense. Conversely, once a criminal is in custody, or has surrendered (as in your example), no immediate threat exists, and killing the assailant at that point may only be justified by less ethical reasoning.
Why one appeal? Are you certain you’ll always get it right after that? Is there any reason someone convicted of petty theft, facing a fine, should potentially have access to more avenues of appeal than someone facing exile?
Where is this one appeal to be held? In the state court of appeal or the state supreme court? What if there are federal issues at stake?
Nick
I’m inclined to agree with you as regards the potential return of the death penalty to my country, Canada. While I support the death penalty emotionally for such extreme scumbags like Paul Bernardo and Clifford Olson (and would have no problem killing these men myself), I’m concerned that a death penalty requires a death penalty appeals process. I simply can’t see the point of executing someone ten to twenty years after his conviction, not an unusual length of time for an American on death row.
I did once float the idea of a strictly regulated death penalty in Canada where each province gets one per year (or possibly one per million population), thus forcing provincial law-enforcement to choose only the worst cases where the crime is especially monstrous and guilt especially certain, with a fast-track appeals process to the provincial and federal Supreme Courts, but I doubt any attempt to approach the problem rationally would serve. There are citizens who will oppose any death-penalty measure, no matter how regulated, and there are felons who will explore any legal avenue (what have they got to lose, after all?) and I’m not convinced the death penalty would make Canada sufficiently safer to justify the hassle, so forget it.
See my first post on this very topic. Your previous post covers why this should only be applied to things like Murder With Special Circumstances. And I mean Special Circumstances like multiple murder, or kidnap/murder, not Special Circumstances like Being Black In Georgia. There are some cases that are cut and dried.
It’s thoughts like this that chill me when people suggest reduced avenues for appeal. The more heinous the crime, and more serious the punishment, the more vigilant we should be to ensure the validity of the process. After all, it’s in the most shocking cases that the authorities have the greatest incentive to ensure someone is punished, at least theoretically raising the ugly possibility that evidence may be enhanced once someone who is in custody and it is ‘cut and dried’ they did it, though the admissible evidence may not be quite so clear.
Nick
I see no reason to ignore inmate-on-inmate crime at any point. Does a conviction for a drug offense or insurance fraud make an inmate’s murder less heinous? I think we can agree that it does not.
As for them being locked and not being able to cause harm to society, I give you the seven escaped fugitives, including 2 convicted murderers, that escaped in Texas and then murdered a police officer. Yes, they were recaptured, but the were on the run long enough to end another life.
Murderers escape more often than I would have thought before I googled “escaped murderer” and found this about the recent escape (and recapture) of a man convicted of the rape and murder of an 81 year old woman. (he was doing life without parole)
This escaped killer managed to stay on the lam for eight freakin’ years before being recaputured.
So I will have to respectfully disagree with you about incarceration putting and end to the potential further harm to society.
Now we are getting somewhere. Lost of good stuff being posted.
Let’s expand this to include the question of why or how you think it would be possible to have all those bad people in those bad places rethink the DP and outlaw it?
Why are not the common man in the streets of the US or North Korea or anyplace else that is not as enlightened as say Sweden, why are they not forming together to make the change?
Can the change be done in one generation with education?
Does there have to be other things take place before the process can be successful?
How do we get to the place where the parent of a murdered child says, “Well, yeah, it was just a garden variety murder and 20 years is the max punishment because all the non-victims say so and I’m okay with that. It is just and fair.”
Why are not the common man in the streets of the US or North Korea or anyplace else that is not as enlightened as say Sweden, why are they not forming together to make the change?
Who is the arbiter of what is “enlightened?” You?
I don’t consider countries who have abolished the DP necessarily “enlightened.” I think they’re nuts. Those who refuse to punish a crime demand it to be repeated. It could be argued that those who treat murderers with kid gloves are the barbarians, not those who refuse to allow a murderer the chance to escape and murder again.
How do we get to the place where the parent of a murdered child says, "Well, yeah, it was just a garden variety murder and 20 years is the max punishment because all the non-victims say so and I’m okay with that. It is just and fair."
You’re not a parent, are you?
Life without parole is a crock. Just look at what happened in Coker v. Georgia. The SOB in that case was already serving consecutive life sentences for rape, murder, plus a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember. Escaped, raped another woman (then kidnapped her), threatened to kill her husband, then stole their car. I dare you to tell me that Mrs. Carver was protected from harm the day her future rapist was sentenced to life without parole.
And yet, amazingly enough, other western countries with similar socio-economic and legal systems to the United States, and without the death penalty, generally have far fewer murders per capita than the US. Go figure!
I was wondering how long it would be before someone pulled out the “Look at me! I’m a moron” line.
So you agree that your OP was idiotic and frivolous?
First, lets make sure that we’re talking about the USA here. I’m sure you don’t give a shit about the DP in Iraq and various other places.
Now, I don’t think the USA or its people are bad, so lets drop the emotive wording eh?
On to your questions.
Why I think it would be possible for the US to rethink the DP and outlaw it? Because people’s opinions can change over time, I have no reason to think that the US will change its collective opinion, but it could happen.
How? By enough people wanting it to change. It would probably have to be an overwhelming majority, an election would have to hinge on it, and frankly, I don’t see it happening.
Because the common man in the streets of the US don’t want to make the change.
It’s very hard to answer your questions. It’s a bit like asking when and how would the USA become “Nuclear Free”. It’s happened in other countries but I really don’t know what it would take to happen in your country
Precisely! I think a country that has the death penalty but whose citizens can go about their business without fear of being killed in $50 robbery or having their daughters abducted, raped and killed is a far more “civilized” country than one in which the death penalty is abolished so certain of its citizens can feel holier-than-thou superiority to those who would put murderers to death.
I remember when the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty in the early seventies. I remember it mainly because of the rash of convenience store killings and minor robbery killings that followed so there would be no witnesses. I was in one of these convenience stores 45 minutes before the clerk, his wife and their beautiful 6 year old son were taken into the cooler and shot in the back of their heads so no one would be left to identify the three scumbags that robbed them. I stopped in that store all the time and had become friendly with entire family. The clerk was a man by the name of Howard Siler, a very nice, quiet and pleasant guy. His sweet and slightly overweight wife was excited by a new diet book she’d found, and his beautiful, big-eyed little boy kept tugging on my pant leg to show me a new toy he just got. An hour later they were all dead.
And the take? $53 dollars!
A year later I moved to another town a hundred miles away. Hadn’t been there a month and a two convenience store clerks were killed, and in the seven years I lived there 5 more convenience store clerks were killed in order to leave no witnesses.
Now of course we live in a sort of death penalty no-man’s-land where maybe criminals get executed and maybe they don’t, and if they do it’s after 10 to 20 years of appeals. Then they are gently put to sleep like a beloved family pet. So yeah, there probably isn’t as much of a deterrent effect as before. I know that criminals coming in for their injections don’t seem nearly as terrified as they used to be in the days of the gas chamber and electric chair.
But am I in favor of the death penalty? Hell, yeah! And would I like to see a return to hanging, firing squads and electric chairs? Yep! And is it emotional? Yep…sure is. And would society be safer and more civilized as a result? Without a doubt. And am I a bloodthirsty cold-hearted hate-monger? Nope…just a guy who’d like to live in a society where people aren’t being killed right and left over nothing by morons who have no fear of the consequences.
So spare me the barbaric punishment rhetoric! I’d rather live in a civilized society that does away with its killers than a fearful and apprehensive one that allows killers not only to live but in many cases get back out on the streets again. As I said earlier, it is my opinion that if someone deprives another of his life, he has no right to live himself. To the degree he is allowed to do so, I think it is an abomination.
Is escape from new york , the next level in law enforcement. The idea of picking some island , like Baffin or something and dropping off the bad guys ?
Declan
I have lived in a country with no death penalty for the past 4 years, I spent my life prior to that in another country with no death penalty. It’s funny, but I’ve never felt any fear of being killed in a $50 robbery or of anyone being abducted or raped. In fact I’ve never felt any fear of even being in a robbery of any kind. I spent a number of years working night shifts at a gas station, and I had no problems, no fear, enjoyed the job.
Heck in my country (my original one) the police don’t even carry side arms.
Pondering…
Hypothetically, if a condemned inmate were to somehow escape in the death chamber and kill his executioner–Would that be self defense?
Nah, poorly worded fer sure but we are rocking and rolling now so…
*:: Your petty pissing about my posting in this pitting of poorly posted pettiness is quite pithy and fits the pit perfectly. 
*
Well, people keep arguing that the death penalty makes a society so much “safer and more civilized” and makes society a “place where people aren’t being killed left and right,” so again i’ll ask the question that no-one has yet attempted to answer:
If the death penalty does, indeed, lead to such a safe and civilized society, how do you explain the fact that countries with similar socio-economic levels and similar legal and cultural forms to the United States, but without the death penalty, have so much less violent crime (especially murder) than the United States?
(Nations like Canada, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, and various nations of Western Europe, all typically have homicide rates of about one-third to one-quarter the rate of the United States.)
I live in the United States now, and i’ve lived for long stretches in the UK, Australia, and Canada. Take a guess in which of those countries i feel the least safe walking about in the middle of the night?